Proprietor of a general store in Hinckley is beginning a prison sentence for selling tax free tobacco with no health warnings.

Muzafar Sabir Sabah, 33, pleaded guilty at Leicester Crown Court to five counts under the Trade Marks Act 1994 and five of supplying tobacco products without a health warning. The offences took place between June 2016 and January this year.

Sabah of Powell Close, Coventry was given a nine month prison sentence and ordered to pay £800 of court costs.

The court heard how the shop had secret compartments to hide the illegal tobacco.

Concealments were found behind a false tiled kitchen wall, under window panelling near the till and inside an air conditioning unit.

Leicester Crown Court was told Sabah was the leaseholder and owner of the business, which traded illegally despite a number of enforcement actions by the county’s Trading Standards department.

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The defendant, a married father of two, who did not have day-to-day running of the shop claimed his employees had continued to flout the law.

Nadia Silver, prosecuting, said, in total, five searches were carried out, following test purchases of cigarettes and tobacco, during an 18-month period. The illegal trading of fake or illicit cigarettes, at £4 or £5 a pack, continued unaffected by the raids, she said.

“The illicit tobacco relates to products that may be genuine but not intended for the UK market and carried no health warnings in English,” she added. “No excise duties were paid on importation.

“The defendant was more than a figurehead of the business, he was employing those who were selling the products.”

In February last year a tobacco search dog indicated there was something behind a tiled wall in the shop’s kitchen. A key fob found nearby operated a magnetic opening mechanism containing counterfeit and illegal tobacco.

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The concealment included 76 packets of fake Richmond cigarettes and a number of genuine well-known brands and tobacco pouches, originally destined for overseas markets, and without health warnings.

During the execution of a warrant last July further illegal tobacco pouches and cigarettes were seized from underneath window panelling. In January, a search dog at the store indicated tobacco was inside an air con unit – found to contain more illegal tobacco.

The court heard the illegal value of the hundreds of packets and dozens of pouches seized was £3,967 – but the loss in equivalent genuine sales would have been considerably more.

There was no estimate given for the total profit made.

Judge Martin Hurst said: “You knew what was going on at the shop and allowed it to continue so you and others would have been making significant profits. You should have supervised the shop more vigorously.”

Eddy Hamilton, mitigating, said: “As early as February 2017 he was trying to remove his name from the lease. He was a reluctant participant.”

The secret compartments were not said to have been instigated by the defendant.